Expansion of Telestroke Coverage in Community Hospitals: Unifying Stroke Care and Reducing Transfer Rate.

OBJECTIVE: Telestroke (TS) service has been shown to improve stroke diagnosis timing and accuracy, facilitate treatment decisions, and decrease interfacility transfers. Expanding TS service to inpatient units at the community hospital provides an opportunity to follow up on stroke patients and optimize medical management. This study examines the outcome of expanding TS coverage from acute emergency room triage to incorporate inpatient consultation. METHODS: We studied the effect of expanding TS to inpatient consultation service at 19 regional hospitals affiliated with Promedica Stroke Network. We analyzed data pre- and post-TS expansion. We reviewed changes in TS utilization, admission rate, thrombolytic therapy, patient transfer rate, and diagnosis accuracy. RESULTS: Between January 2018 and June 2022, a total of 9,756 patients were evaluated in our stroke network (4,705 in pre- and 5,051 in the post-TS expansion). In the post-TS expansion period, stroke patients' admission at the spoke hospital increased from 18/month to 40/month, and for TIA from 11/month to 16/month. TS cart use increased from 12% to 35.2%. Patient transfers to hub hospital decreased by 31%. TS service expansion did not affect intravenous thrombolytic therapy rate or door-to-needle time. There was no difference in length of stay or readmission rate, and the patients at the spoke hospitals had a higher rate of home discharge 57.38% compared with 52.58% at hub hospital. INTERPRETATION: Telestroke service expansion to inpatient units helped decrease transfers and retain patients in their communities, increased stroke and TIA diagnosis accuracy, and did not compromise patients' hospitalization or outcome. ANN NEUROL 2024;95:576-582.

Detecting the association between residual thrombus and post-thrombotic classification of chronic venous disease with range regression.

This paper addresses a clinical hypothesis detected by the method of range regression, a new statistical method portraying the clinical response via the range of an explanatory variable. For patients with iliofemoral deep venous thrombosis, it has long been clinically suspected that residual thrombus affects the quality of life after catheter-directed thrombolysis. However, such important medical experience has not been validated or scientifically quantified by experimental or observational data. In clinical practice, this association may directly affect the duration of thrombolytic therapy or other attempts at clot removal. In this study, we develop a new regression model to identify how the quantity of clot lysed affects the clarification of chronic venous disease after catheter-directed thrombolysis (a correlated index on postthrombotic quality of life). Bridging clinical insight with statistics by means of medical records of 62 IFDVT patients, the new method reveals that residual thrombus significantly and substantially affects post-thrombotic clarification of chronic venous disease. The conclusion of the new method is confirmed by a conventional logistic regression method when 50% thrombus removal is treated as a categorization threshold. This new approach is applicable to analyze other clinical or medical variables on the treatment of venous diseases.